How'd they copy our idea before we thought of it?

April 2, 1997

Man, you gotta hand it to The Other Side. They know their stuff.

The state's two most influential newspapers — the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle — have joined in the call to end discussion about charges raised by some members of the State Board of Education that Texas has bought into a "national" education agenda.

Maybe it's just me, but isn't it just a bit strange to find two newspapers — papers which will dig into "conspiracy" theories about the Oklahoma City bombing or the Houston City Council bribery-sting operation — who don't want to investigate conspiracy charges leveled by elected state officials, on a subject as serious as the education of our children?

The Morning News' editorial of March 30, for example, heatedly points out that the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — yep, that same stuff ol' George Jr. called "mush" back in January — has the complete support of the Texas Business and Education Coalition. What they didn't tell you is that the Chronicle's Bob Carlquist is a member of the TBEC Board of Directors.

Well goll-ee, Sergeant Carter!

Politicians and educators, from the local level to the state and national levels, insist that the current wave of education "reform" and "restructuring" is being definitively driven from the local and state level. Education reform, education standards, children's health insurance, a new curriculum based on high standards for all — there's no national conspiracy here, they say.

A spokesman for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, for example, has said that if it's not an idea spawned in Texas to benefit Texans, the Governor's not interested in it.

Perhaps it's only a startling coincidence, then, that the education debate currently grabbing huge headlines in Texas is being repeated across the nation — in states like Washington, Oregon, California, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Arkansas and Virginia.

Interestingly enough, the arguments in other states are almost identical to the ones in Texas — as are the programs and even the NAMES of the programs. Also coincidentally, those raising the questions are categorically labeled as "religious conservatives," "social conservatives" or simply as "troublemakers."

"I've been in 40 states over the past several years, speaking on this," said author and educational traditionalist Charlotte T. Iserbyt of Maine Thursday. "It's pathetic."

Iserbyt, a former U.S. Department of Education employee in the Reagan Administration, left the DOE, she said, when she learned that agency was involved in a plan to re-design society, and at one time openly offered "Deliberate Dumb-Down Packets" which, she claimed, the Department promoted.

"They've been doing this at least since the 1960s," Iserbyt said. "The protests of minorities in the 1960s prompted the first wave of experiments with 'performance-based' teaching. It worked so well at dumbing people down, now they want to do it to everybody. We've lost millions of people in the inner cities (to illiteracy) because of this."

In Pueblo, Colo., parent Cathy Green questioned the results of a national test — the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — given to her daughter. School personnel inadvertently gave Green a copy of the test, something they'd been instructed by the Department of Education not to do.

"The person who was supposed to explain it to me wasn't there, and the principal just handed it to me," Green said. "I looked at it. I was concerned about the open-ended questions, and realized they weren't testing knowledge, they were looking to see what the children are thinking.

"The test was scored by 'professional groups' according to American Psychological Association guidelines," Green said. "If you saw this thing, you'd throw up."

Green admits she's made "a big stink" over the matter, and is currently involved in litigation to prevent her child's data from being monitored. Federal lawsuits have also been filed to prevent data-tracking of school children in both Oregon and Ohio.

Perhaps coincidentally, Green adds, Colorado is also debating the implementation of such "original" Texas programs as "School-to-Work" and "Healthy Kids."

In Texas, a vote was scheduled Tuesday on House Bill 3, designed to set up a "Healthy Kids Corporation." Similar programs in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, spurred by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, used private money to leverage state funds to set up school-based health and mental-health clinics.

In order to get foundation money, Kentucky gave the foundation rights to use and even sell all of the data collected from patients, doctors and hospitals — putting the state in the unusual position of selling confidential data on its citizens.

Interesting: Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Colorado copied Texas' idea before Texas even thought of it. Them damn Yankees are sneaky, ain't they?

A Pennsylvania legislative investigation into the same type of program was highly critical of both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

"The Pew Charitable Trust has been a major funding source for the Alliance in Colorado," Green said. "All these things are setting up school-to-work, which seems like just what they're doing in Texas. They're telling us this is a program which originated in Colorado."

Duh!